Diary of a volunteer: On the front line of war

Part 4: A journey to the front

Saturday 15 June, 2024

I wake later than I intended and have just enough time for a shower and toast before clambering into the waiting MOAS transfer vehicles. I’m delighted to find myself setting in the front, beside our driver, Igor, which means we can chat on the road.

As we drive, he tells us about his family; he has two sons, 12 and 35. The older is in Kyiv still but his younger left for Germany at the start of the war. “He hates it there,” Igor says, “he is always asking to come home, but who knows; it depends on things.” Igor shrugs, trying to indicate the thousand complexities of their situation in a single gesture.

We pass a factory, a burnt-out ruin on the road out of Kyiv. Igor notices me looking. “Drone strike,” he says, “probably just to practice”. Next, we’re crossing a bridge with strange round track marks all along it in a neat, long row. When I ask about them, he says simply “this bridge is closed when the sirens sound”. I put two and two together but ask him no further questions, picturing the night duty forces, lining up the anti-aircraft guns on a bridge that, just hours before, was hosting the bustling Kyiv traffic.

Next, we pass the turnoff to Kyiv Airport, which has been closed and non-functional for two years. On the runway are rows of Ukrainian Airway planes just sitting, waiting to be used. It’s eerie to see this hub of international travel at a complete standstill. The runways are bare and the aircraft age, useless and alone.

The drive will be around six hours today. The roads are clear and well maintained, there’s not as much traffic as I would normally expect, but we’re certainly not alone. As we get further from the capital the vehicles change gradually to almost exclusively military vehicles and ambulances in every possible iteration of camo, all heading east. The only exception to this general rule are the fuel trucks. They travel in convoy, barrelling down the highways kicking up spray. They’re heading to the front to feed the ravenous war machine. The fighting is like a hungry animal consuming so many of Ukraine’s desperately stretched resources, fuel, funds, medicines and lives. On the other side of the road are wrecked military vehicles, trucks full of exhausted soldiers, dirty ambulances in need of maintenance. It is a conveyer belt that never stops, and the winner will be the side who can keep the beast fed for longest.

Igor speaks of conscription during the Soviet era, a practice that dragged young men and the elderly from their homes to the front. He proudly states that post-independence Ukraine has never used forced service, until now. There was a surge of enlistments at the start of the war; men and women eager to protect their land and their families, but enthusiasm for active duty has waned, and now the military rely on conscription to backfill the positions left by the wounded or killed. As of May 2024, all men between the ages of 25 and 60 are required to register and wait to be called up and conscription officers patrol public spaces, checking the register and confirming details.

Driving in Ukraine is an incredible experience. The journey is divided by check points and land stretches out in every direction. There is just so much space. So much beauty. Yellow wheat fields span the horizon under a blue sky. An iconic image of Ukraine that inspired the flag.

On the road, we listen to some of Igor’s rock music, as he taps the drum sections out subconsciously on the steering wheel of the car. I watch a video of a much younger version of him, drumming behind a popular Ukrainian pop star, on YouTube. The video is constantly interrupted by air raid siren alerts, which he deftly leans over to dismiss without looking. I’m curious as to whether he plays anymore. He says there’s no work to be had, but also, he has ‘lost the musical mood’.

We finally arrive in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, the final one before you enter the Donbas region. Here, the gas stations are packed with military vehicles, almost all the other people we see are dressed in fatigues. Men smoking at truck stops look thin and tired as they cast a curious eye over our young, fresh team, all travelling in uniform as an unspoken justification for our presence here.

By around 4pm we’re arriving in the closest town to our location. Here we have a late lunch with Vitalii and Artem, two the most influential characters in our largest bases, and both highlighted in chapters of our book. Vitalii has a security background, one of the only non-medical personnel on our roster. He is responsible for the logistics and operations planning for all 14 of MOAS’s far forward medical evacuation bases. He is a tall and imposing figure, with a long beard and a serious face. At lunch, he speaks only to answer direct questions, and always through our translator. By the end of the trip, he will be speaking freely in broken English, laughing at videos of my crazy children, teasing me for not wearing shoes at the base.

After lunch, we head to the MOAS camp, an unassuming building with absolutely no sign of use. The windows are boarded up or hang open on broken hinges, the metal door bolted behind an overgrown path. This is all intentional. The MOAS team know how valuable their work is here, and that in itself makes them a target. Their previous base was targeted by a drone strike just two weeks after they’d moved to this location. This is not the shiny, attention-grabbing humanitarian signalling I’m used to. This is humble, quiet and purpose led programming where all decisions are made based on function, practicality and, above all, security.

Once inside we are shown around the base. To call it basic is generous. With no water, apart from at dawn and dusk, the hallways are lined with jerry cans of water. The lights are dim at best and non-existent in the bunker, and the corridors echo as we make our way through the building. But the functionality of the space could not be more different. The cleanliness, organisation, itemisation and proficiency of every element of the structure is evident at a glance. Inventories, itineraries, rosters, security protocol and housekeeping schedules paper the walls on every level. The MOAS staff, both on and off duty, are all in uniform and can be seen keeping busy cleaning, categorising, restocking, cooking and refilling jerrycans. Artem has devised an ingenious make-shift water reservoir system and a locker-based ambulance restock protocol to ensure full capacity of all vehicles both day and night.

Crew drift in and out of the recreation room to greet us as their shifts change. They pour over the book, pointing out familiar faces in the photos, calling out to one another and trying to highlight important people or places to us. When dusk comes, the halls empty. The on-duty crews prepare to deploy, while those next on the schedule get much needed rest.

We sit quietly on the dilapidated sofas and along the intimidatingly laden weights bench and listen to the rumblings from the front.

You quickly learn to discern the sound of drone strike from the reply of anti-aircraft guns, the boom of heavy artillery from the rhythmic rattle of the guns. The air raid sirens go off once or twice, but here, this close to the action, it’s hardly worth announcing danger. Everyone who is still here knows they live under the threat of bombardment every minute of every day.

Alina is the first to be called for an evacuation. It’s 11:15pm and she is dressed by Vitalii in her bullet proof vest. She looked so small as she walked with our team to the transfer vehicle. We stood on the steps as they drove out of sight. They’ll be driving to one of several, spread out, storage locations for the ambulances. Not only would their presence, lined up outside base, be too much of a target for the team, but also it is strategically unwise for them to be kept together, just in case they’re hit, as we wouldn’t want to lose a whole fleet in one fell swoop. When even the lights of the car have disappeared down the road we go back inside. No one went back to bed. We automatically went to the reception area and sat together in the dark listening to the rumble of the guns. Inside, it was absolutely silent.

Eventually it was just me and one colleague, standing alone on the balcony with all the lights off. There are blackout rules here, every home has heavy silver paper on the windows to block light from overhead aircraft. In the dark, the stars are impossibly bright. We trace a satellite across the sky as the neighbourhood dogs bark in response to the booms.